We live in a time where children are becoming overworked before they even hit high school. And here’s my suggestion – ditch the homework.
Banning homework will make for healthier kids, because they will have time to play, to exercise and to help mum and dad prepare food.
School children already spend six hours a day exercising their minds. What about their bodies? Ban homework and your kids can spend time being more active. More active kids are more intelligent kids. The body carries the mind.
In our opinion, school time should be school time and home time should be home time.
Parents don’t send kids to school with a list of home chores to do, and schools shouldn’t send kids home with a list of school chores to do.
We’re all sitting around waiting for a politician to make a decision, but we forget that politicians aren’t dictators, they’re spokespeople. They can’t make the decision for us.
If you are a parent who believes that schoolwork needs to stay at school, and you want your children to have a real childhood, just start saying “no”.
If families stop doing homework, it will stop being handed out. And don’t worry about the teachers, we’re sure they’d prefer to be actually teaching than creating and marking homework. Just like parents would rather spend the time preparing healthy dinners than helping with homework.
Our call does come with a warning however: Homework is far better than screen or phone time, so warn your kids that if they don’t play outside, do chores and help with dinner, you’ll bring it back!
Do you agree? Should homework be banned in favour of outdoor activities? Is homework making our kids fat?
Top Comments
High school is the real problem. As a student who just finished year 12 I can assure you that kids only start getting really overworked in the VCE years. We had so many emotional breakdowns per week, illnesses, people avoiding and not wanting to come to school all because of the amount of work. We would all be up at 6.30 each day to study for the 2-3 tests we would have each day. Go to school, work our butts off during each class, have an hour of lunch which is mostly everyone sitting there tired. Then after school, finally getting home at 4. Have something to eat and begin homework. Make a brief appearance for dinner. Back to work. Maybe about 1/2 hour of free time before bed around 11.30 or 12. If we don't have a Sac the next day that is. If we do, you can expect even longer in front of the school books. None of this factors in a part time job or playing a sport.
The fact is, that its too much work. All the kids I know of from 16-18 feel like they barely have time for friends or family, no time to just relax and go for a walk or play. Majority of our time is completely taken up with school, and its creating Kids that are exhausted, emotional and hating education.
Something needs to change in terms of kids education, it really does because it's just not healthy.
I disagree. I find that the reinforcement of knowledge and skills learnt during the day is necessary. I'm still at school and I have a reasonable workload (at least 3.5 hours of homework/assignments per night), and I find homework to be more beneficial than detrimental. (Oh and for what it's worth, I exercise 8 hours per week, it's just about finding a balance)